15 Things That Happened
by nothing-rhymes-with-ianto
Summary: Fifteen things that did happen, might've happened or could have happened.
1. A Great Perhaps

So this was an exercise I did in which I put my mp3 player on shuffle and flipped through songs until I was inspired. Then I wrote a small piece inspired by the song. None of these are song fics because song fics are the bane of my existence. Nor do any of these stories directly use the lyrics of the song. They were all simply inspired by the feeling and tone of the song.

* * *

><p><em>Super Heroes (Rocky Horror Picture Show Soundtrack)<em>

"Is it better then?" Owen's tired voice startled him, but Jack contained it to only a small jerk.

"What?"

"Is it better in the future, where you come from?" Owen came to stand beside him, looking over the empty Hub. Neither man had to sleep now, and too often Jack would exit from his office or his bunker to find Owen staring darkly across the Hub. "It's just that you seem to want it so much more."

"No. Yes. I don't know." Rubbing his brow, Jack fought to dredge up memories and emotions packed away. "I knew my place there. I knew my future. I knew that I was going to join the military and fight for the lives of my village and I knew I was probably going to die. And then my father was killed and my brother….Anyway, I left. It wasn't better."

"But?"

"What?"

Owen shifted, hands gripping the metal banister. "There's a 'but' in there. I could hear it."

"But this isn't any better. This lot, this time period….you're all so stuck. You're just floating, lost, looking for meaning. And I can't help. I know all the things that are going to come, I know things that are going to happen years from now. I know monsters you'll set on yourselves and things that you'll have no control over and I won't be able to stop them. And all the while you lot are just sitting here, being eaten up from the inside by your own beasts, scrabbling about for meaning or whatever it is you want. It's just so different."

"No, it isn't. Why did you leave….wherever you're from?"

"To find my brother. To figure out what to do now that there was nothing left for me there. I was only fourteen, in Earth years."

A hand touched Jack's shoulder, cold but urgent. "You were still just like us, back here in this time. There were things you couldn't control. And you were still looking for meaning."

"But—"

"That's the purpose of the human race, Jack. To find meaning in this crazy world. To be lost, to endure the horrors and the tortures of life, to look for truth, whatever the hell that may be. That's the reason we don't all go mad and kill ourselves. We're all still battling whatever beasts we have, we're all still looking for why we're here." Owen snorted, shaking his head. He pulled his hand away and rested it again on the banister. "You're a hundred years old or whatever. I'd have expected you to figure that out long before me."


	2. Peace Is The Measure

_Solla Sollew (Seussical The Musical!)_

Peace for them. It's all he really wanted.

He hated it. He hated having to find the broken ones, having to put them together as best he could. Sometimes they came together better than others, fixed enough that they could function at least partially in the real world. Most were still crooked, missing pieces, limping. All still had cracks.

All he wanted was to find some way to make them whole again. He wanted them to have peace. He wanted their hurts gone. He wanted to see them smile without strain, without pain behind their eyes, smile fully and openly and without guilt or fear.

He wanted happiness for them more than anything.

He had forever. He'd find it.

Even if it took him miles. Even if it took him years.


	3. The Ghosts That Whisper To You

_Those You've Known (Spring Awakening)_

He feels silly coming over here at this time, but Ianto had looked distressed and exhausted and pained when he left that evening, and Owen didn't really want to think of what his friend had going through his head—he had similar thoughts creeping up to the edges of his mind.

His knock elicits a grunt from behind the door which Owen takes to mean 'Come in, it's unlocked.' He's right.

He finds Ianto sitting on the couch, leaning over the coffee table, which is covered in photographs. Sitting beside the Welshman, Owen notes that many of the pictures are Lisa, but there are also photos of groups of people he's never seen before, and a few black and whites of a couple which he assumes to be Ianto's parents.

"My friends from uni and Torchwood London." Ianto explains when Owen touches a group photo full of teenagers grinning in a huddle. He rubs his eyes with a hand. "I just….sometimes I feel like their ghosts are pushing me. I hear their voices in my head, talking to me and telling me things, stopping me or making me keep going. I feel like I've failed them somehow, with all the stuff I've done. Or haven't."

"I know." It's simple, brief, but Ianto looks up when Owen's voice cracks.

"Owen, I—"

But the doctor waves him away with a hand, then massages the inner corner of his eye with the pads of his fingers. "It's alright, Ianto. I don't—I don't talk about it much. Gwen doesn't know anything. Tosh doesn't know much. You and Jack…well, Jack knows of course. You…I had to tell you about Katie back then, just to explain to you that I wasn't pissed about Lisa."

He sighs, and picks up a photograph of Ianto as a teenager, grinning beside a freckly ginger kid with a huge mop of hair, flipping it over and over in his fingers. Ianto watches the spinning photograph instead of his face.

"There are so many I failed to save, or failed to help. So many that I promised things to and never kept. And…Katie. I know what it's like to have ghosts, have them whisper to you in the night."

"Sometimes it feels like they're accusing me, like I shouldn't even be here because they aren't." Ianto shrugged his shoulders and plucked the photograph from Owen's loose grasp.

Owen nodded. "But sometimes they give you hope, keep you holding on. I know."

"So what do we do?"

Owen stood, offering a hand to Ianto. They stepped together to look out at the full moon from Ianto's large picture window. The night seemed dark and something close to peaceful compared to the last forty-eight hours full of bombs and sleeper agents.

"We remember them. We let them whisper. Keep them close and don't let them go."

"Alone?"

"I know, and you know. We can do it together. And we remember that tomorrow's a new day."


	4. You Only Want What You've Got

_Get Born Again (Alice In Chains)_

The worst part, actually, was the injuries. The stitching. Back home- and he always felt strange to think of Torchwood and the Hub as 'home,' but that's what it was to him, especially now- back home, Ianto would be the one stitching him up or setting a bone. The young man had been strangely good at it, experienced even, and it sometimes made Owen wonder what his life had been like before Torchwood found him.

He missed that most of all, more than the shagging, or the takeout, or the good beer, or the well-stocked weapons storeroom, or even the ability to sleep peacefully without having to be constantly on high alert. Okay, maybe not more than the last one. But he missed it. He missed not having to care for himself when he got hurt. He missed the back-and-forth banter as he sat on the cold metal table and good-naturedly critiqued Ianto's style. He missed the pale, gentle hands caring for him, steady as they stitched him back together, strong as they made him whole again. He missed home.


	5. No Hope, No Harm

_Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me (The Smiths)_

Of course he'd thought she'd save him. Who would blame him? She was everything he was missing, everything he couldn't handle. She was smart and stable and stoic and he—well, he was such a child when it came to these things. And emotions always got the better of him exactly when he didn't want them to.

They'd walked around the city together, side by side. He'd tried to teach her about modern Cardiff, but she had just shaken her head tiredly.

"It's so strange. A city that I knew so well, and now I feel lost in it."

A shiver had run through him; it was too close to _her_ words. That should have been his first clue that he would lose her. The other should have been her sad but indulgent smile as she danced with him on the rooftop, the way she'd stared up into the sky like she wanted to flee. He should have known that she didn't love him, not really. He should have known that his own foolish heart would hurt him in the end. He should have known that she would go.

"What memories I'm taking with me."

Sometimes it felt like she was just a dream.


	6. Questioning After Who Loves

_You're Gonna Need Someone On Your Side (Morrissey)_

Ianto had been confined to the Hub for the better part of the investigation, and so had spent most of his time down in the archives, or watching the team via CCTV. He'd heard everything over the comms, though. He headed up the stairs when the SUV pulled away from the driveway.

Now it was over, and he heard the rumble of the SUV as it was parked in the secret underground car park. There was no chattering or talk when the alarms of the cog door blared, and Ianto ascended the last few steps to the main hub. He watched Jack trudge up to his office, shoulders slumped, head down. He waited a moment, then followed the captain up.

He paused when he had almost reached the doorway. Jack was leaning over his desk, not sitting in his chair as usual. He was doubled over, one hand clenched over his eyes, his face a contorted mask of grief, his other hand trembling as it held his full weight. He stayed that way for a few long moments, and Ianto could see that his chest was heaving. Then Jack straightened up, typed a few commands on the computer with several fast keystrokes, and began to collect some things from around the room. Ianto stepped in and cleared his throat softly.

Jack sighed, and sounded weighted with dust. "Are you here to tell me you're not speaking to me, either? Because really, you don't have to bother. You can just go home and spare me the guilt trip or whatever."

Ianto stepped around the desk and placed a hand over Jack's shaking ones where he'd been frantically rifling through his desk drawers. Slowly, he withdrew Jack's hands from the drawer and reached into the back, pulling out the tape and sheet of labels that the Captain had been looking for.

"No. I thought you might want some help. I wasn't sure if you could do this on your own."

Jack exhaled shakily and sat down as Ianto travelled about the room, retrieving various items.

"Ianto, why—"

"She was your wife. You loved her." It wasn't a question. Jack nodded anyway. He didn't ask how Ianto knew, how he'd figured it out. It didn't matter. Ianto looked away and then back at Jack as if mentally changing the subject. "I understand. Sometimes decisions have to be made that don't save everyone. Sometimes sacrifices must be made."

Jack looked down at the top of his desk. He could see the grooves worn into it from the scrape of his shoes. "I'm sorry—"

A warm hand fell on his shoulder, the side of the thumb soft against the skin of Jack's neck. Ianto's breath tickled as it shifted the hairs on the top of his head. "Don't apologize. I get it," his voice softened. "Do you want me to help? I'm here."

"Yes," Jack responded, quicker than he wanted to. "Yes."


	7. Ghost Silicon, Senses Gone

_Electric Funeral (Black Sabbath)_

They hadn't been fast enough. Ianto had been too clever, they'd been too unsuspecting. She'd taken them by surprise one morning after everyone had gotten in. It was like she'd planned it.

Jack had turned to the others, about to ask where Ianto was, when the power cut out, lockdown setting in. Fumbling for one of the torches stashed in various places, they had almost missed the quiet, metallic _zzt zzt_ of approaching evil. Tosh had grasped her torch just in time, swinging it around to illuminate the source of the noise.

"Oh, _god_."

A jagged mound of sheet metal was lodged where the left half of Ianto's face had been. His right eye stared at them without emotion or recognition. Bits of metal and wiring protruded from his body. A crude version of the Cyberman helmet arced across Ianto's head, from one ear to the other. Large slabs of sheet metal covered his chest, wires poking out at various points, burnt bits of flesh hanging off them. His mouth had been torn open, the flesh of the cheek flapping wetly against his exposed molars.

"You will convert or be deleted." Ianto's accent was nearly gone. His voice sounded emotionless and digital. His eye stared unerringly at them, vessels in the white of it burst and flooding. The spaces between his teeth were black with blood.

Another metallic sound from behind them, and they whipped round in time to see Gwen go down, blue threads of electricity leaping across her body. Jack squeezed off a round, but the bullets ricocheted right off the metal casing of the Cyberman. An arm struck him from behind and flung him away like a bag of sand. The shell of Ianto and the strange metal monster faced the remaining two.

"Convert or be deleted."

"No." Owen's voice was defiant and spitting with fury. He stepped up to the Cyberman, determinedly not looking at the thing that used to be Ianto. "No."

"Delete." Blue electricity arced across Owen's body and he fell to the ground. Ianto's gaze did not waver or look down.

"You will open the door or be deleted." Tosh stared, wide-eyed at the two machines in front of her. She couldn't. She couldn't.

With a gasp, Jack came back to life. She ran to him. The Cyberman followed. Ianto didn't.

"You will be deleted." Tosh noticed irrationally that she could not tell if the thing had once been male or female. Jack began to talk, but she didn't register anything he was saying. Her fear had taken over and she could think of nothing but the blank eyes and Owen's body on the ground.

The klaxon of the cog door brought everyone back to the present. Ianto's horrible, grotesque shell had used his access codes to open the door, and he was walking away, out of the circular opening. Tosh could see blood soaking his back. It looked like he'd been stabbed. It was the last thing she saw.

"Delete. Delete."

Tosh was gone. Jack was gone. The Cyberman turned, surveyed the damaged hull of the Hub, and marched out of the cog door to the waiting corpse of Ianto.

"This world will be upgraded."


	8. And You're All Alone, Flesh And Bone

_Personal Jesus (Marilyn Manson)_

Suzie was glad she'd given the Briscos a little nudge with the retcon to get them to start Pilgrim. It hadn't been hard. And now it served a dual purpose.

It was nice to have a place to talk about something other than work, to ask the strange philosophical questions and mental puzzles about existence and creation that her job tended to breed. It was good to confess her sins and talk about her work—purely in metaphors and hidden references, of course.

Of course there was always Max. She had been working on him from day one of the program. He was a good target, easily manipulated, easily moulded. He just wanted to drink with a pretty girl. Suzie made that easy for him, and slowly shaped his mind just so.

She was always the odd one out in Pilgrim, never truly getting as close to anyone else. Except Max. But she always talked the most. Sometimes she wondered what she was trying to convince herself to believe. Other times she knew, she knew just what she had to do to make everything work, just the way she wanted it.


	9. This Is The Moment

_Love Me Tonight (Great Big Sea)_

Owen smiles across the table at her. She looks content, and unbeknownst to her, there's a tiny smile gracing the corners of her lips. There's light in her eyes and she looks wonderful. He wants to look at her always. His hand is in hers, and he plays with her fingers gently, brushing against her palm. She smiles at him, knowingly this time, and he's very nearly knocked over by her gaze. She's lovely. He feels weighed down by the sensation in his gut. He gulps. He's never felt like this before, like he's drowning, like he's wrapped in a soft warm blanket, like he never wants to let go.

"Do…do you want to come back to my place tonight?"

She laughs and squeezes his hand. "I thought you'd never ask."


	10. A Swallow That By Some Mistake

_Psoriatic (Scott Walker)_

After Suzie, the darkness is terrifying where it had once been simply there.

If Jack listens closely, he can here the dissonant presence of a great _something_, waiting for him. It sounds like a Hail Mary, but backward and scrambled and _twisted_. It sounds like saws. It sounds like the rakish laughter of corpses. It sounds like wind howling through nothing. It sounds like a broken heartbeat stuttering and distorted. Jack huddles in on himself in the darkness, trying to block out the harsh scream of too much-too little sound in the yawning black self-contradictory nothingness.

Coming back is almost as bad as being kept in the darkness. The cruel shriek of sounds gets louder, as if it wants to be heard and remembered, as if it wants to haunt. It grates against him as his senses are dually assaulted by the blackness and the coming corporeal world. He can feel himself being torn in two as he begins to come back.

And then there's one screaming, awful moment that he's terrified he might be pulled back, stuck in the blackness and he's shrieking so loud he can feel his throat tearing out and his teeth bleeding and he knows he's going to be stuck down here on the cross of deprived senses and antithetical awareness, and then he's being yanked back into life and he sucks air into his intact throat and waits for the dissonant sawing in his veins to lessen.


	11. Here They Come

_The Prophet's Song (Queen)_

She had been having seizures for the better part of a year. At least, that's what she thought they were. She'd freeze up completely for a minute or more, strange visions flickering across her mind, before she was released.

They weren't futuristic visions. She was a soothsayer by trade, but it wasn't like she was real by any stretch of the imagination. She was the simple silly fake fortune-teller tourists loved to spend their money. She also sold general occult paraphernalia. But these things were new. She was just glad she had never had one in front of another person.

Until they came in.

They were just kids, barely twenty-three. They weren't even tourists. They were locals she'd seen walking around before.

"There's nothing else to do around here," they told her. "Can you read our fortunes? We just want a bit of fun."

She agreed readily and led them into her reading room, sitting them down and laying out her cards. She flipped over the first one. The Tower. She opened her mouth to begin. And froze. Her body went stiff, her face slack, eyes staring forward, wide with a horrible fear. She took a breath, and when she spoke her voice was harsh with terror. The six in front of her stared in mute horror.

"In four months, he will rise, lifted by the hands of the people. There will be no day. There will be only death and destruction. He will force night upon us all with his metal army. When the first announcement is made, go! Go to Cardiff. There you will find the green bough in the form of four beneath the earth. Join them, and peace will be achievable. Heed my warning! For if you do not go, death awaits you in all its forms. Find the burning branch and light the way for the one who walks the earth. Heed my warning! He will come!"

She gasped in a great breath of air and shook her head a little to clear it. She looked at the six in front of her. They were staring at her with gaping mouths.

"Sorry about that. I've been checking out like that lately. I seem to be having a medical issue. I will need to get it looked at. Now, why don't we continue with your reading?"

"Is this what that lady meant?" One of them asked in a whisper as they stared at the insane prime minister on the telly.

"I—I think so," another answered.

"What do we do now?" asked a third.

"We go to Cardiff. And we find those four she was talking about."


	12. We Have A History, You And I

_Erase (Mika)_

You can remember the moment she walked through the door, first day on the force. It was only your third. She stuck out her hand and grinned easily at you, exposing the gap in her teeth, and you loved her immediately.

It was a few days later that you learned she had a boyfriend who she had no intention of leaving any time soon. Outwardly you shrugged and feigned indifference, but inside you were spiralling down.

You got drunk that night and left a couple of very embarrassing messages on the answer machine of her mobile.

She didn't mention it in the morning.


	13. Such An Angry Young Man

_Fooling Yourself (Styx)_

People tended to ask him why he was so angry, why he was such a tosser, why he was so mean and cruel and what did the world ever do to you?

"Listen, you've jut got to keep working. You have the talent and the knowledge, I can tell. Just give it your best shot. I think you have quite a future ahead of you."

{"Just get out. You're useless! No talent dumb shit. Go. I don't want to have to spend my money on feeding you any more. There's nothing I can do for you."}

"It's like you're convinced you'll never be good enough. Take a break, you're killing yourself. You're brilliant, trust me. You're one of our best doctors."

{"You're worse than your father! You might even be less than nothing."}

"You really are just a big softy, aren't you?"

{"Do you care about_ anyone_ but yourself?"}

He's really not sure how to answer them.


	14. Things You Think Won't Happen

_Miniature Disasters (KT Tunstall)_

Owen frowns at him, but his exploring fingers never stop. Ianto bucks against him and digs his fingers into the medic's shoulder.

"I thought you were shagging Jack. I thought you were in _love_ with Jack."

Ianto's hand wriggles into Owen's pants and executes a wonderful stroke that leaves Owen shuddering and moaning and nipping at the Welshman's throat.

"I thought I was too."

"What happened?"

"Turns out I was second in line."

They discard clothes and start toward the bedroom. They don't get too far, and Owen shoves Ianto up against the wall to pay far too much attention to his nipples and not enough to his cock.

"Why aren't you waiting, then? Seems like something you'd do."

"Well, then you don't know me very well."

"Apparently." The lecherous grin is obvious in the medic's voice.

Ianto's hands are in Owen's hair, gripping hard, and he uses that advantage to tug Owen upward and kiss him hard and passionate on the mouth before pushing him back down to tend to the pressing need of his erection. Ianto nearly chokes on an inhale as Owen takes him in one go. He cards one hand through the Londoner's hair, the other on the side of Owen's neck. This is crazy and probably destined to fail, but he likes it and he's not going to let a little relationship catastrophe stop him.

"A spot opened up elsewhere and I was first in line."


	15. Those Who Live

_I'm Alive (Next To Normal)_

At first he doesn't really notice anything. He dreams about them, but that's normal. He thinks he sees the out of the corner of his eye. That's sort of normal, too.

But then he actually _does_ see Tosh.

"T-Toshiko?"

"Yep!" She gives him a smile that's brighter and more open than he's ever seen from her before. "It's me. What're you doing?"

"Watching CCTV. Why are you here?"

"Because you're lonely."

"No I'm not. I have the new team. I have Alonso."

"And you don't go out with them and you don't let him stay the night. You're alone. You're completely alone." Jack frowns and blinks and Toshiko has winked out of existence.

"Still can't die, I see." Jack sighs. Great. Just what he needs today. He's already died three times and the last one was really painful.

"What the _fuck _do you want?" he snaps at Alice's ghost.

"Nothing. Just watching you killing time and yourself, all terrified of how huge your future is and how you're going to cope with existing." Her grin is feral. Jack shudders, thinking of electrodes and guns.

"Leave." She does.

Jack wakes up coughing. Turns out he's so twisted up in his sheets, he's choking himself with his own blankets. He untangles himself and sits up. And screams.

"_Fuck_." He places his hand over his ever-beating heart as if to still it. "Ianto?"

"The very one."

"What are you all doing here."

"Living."

"You're dead."

"I'm not."

"You're dead. I watched you die. You died in my arms."

"I am not." Ianto's movements are eerily fluid, his smile haunted and something on the side of cruel. "I'm under your skin. You won't let me go. I will always be alive. We will always be alive. We will always watch you."

"Stop."

"We will watch you living and dying and being. We will be in every place you are. We will make sure to keep you occupied. We will find you and you will not run."

"Stop!"

"Your destruction will be from the inside. We will always live, just as you."

"_Stop!_" Jack was screaming now, backed up against the wall.

"Are we alive? Or are you the spirit?"

"Stop!"

Shadows, profiles, shapes formed behind Ianto's pale figure. Voices chorused together as Jack tried to shut out the sound of death's whispers.

"We Live."


End file.
